New Mexico Geological Society Annual Spring Meeting — Abstracts

Long-term kinetic testing is commonly performed on rock samples when evaluating acid generation, acid neutralization, and leaching rates from mine waste material. These tests are primarily performed in the laboratory under controlled conditions on small amounts of material compared to what they are intended to represent. The tests have been used to confirm or evaluate the result from static testing, Acid–Base Accounting, i.e. if sulfide containing waste material will go acidic or not. Field tests on larger samples set to the specific conditions of the sites are however, becoming more common as well.

This talk is reviewing and discussing kinetic tests performed on mine waste form a nickel deposit, ilmenite deposits, massive sulfide deposits, porphyry copper deposit, and the usefulness of running these tests. It is necessary to understand the parameter that are different in the laboratory compared with the natural setting to be able to scale up the result and predict what will happen in a waste rock stockpile. These may be the humidity, flow regime through the waste material, temperature, oxygen availability, rainfall/water addition. Are these differences generating different mineralogical regime between the lab tests and the natural setting. How we can improve the test methods and get more out of the expensive long-term tests that most mining operations handling sulfidic waste have to perform.